Changing Ideas

I spend a lot of time thinking about the act of collecting.  You may not have noticed. ;)

I started collecting as an adult in 1997, and for a long time I had very specific ideas of what I wanted my collection to be.  I focused on the brushable ponies I liked (mainly ponies I'd had or wanted as a child), playsets, and accessories. That's it, that's all.

At a certain point in the early 2000s, I started to change the way I looked at my collection. This was partly due to G3 coming out - I loved the throwbacks to G1 in general look, names, and some of the styles. But there were also styles that I hadn't liked in G1 that I did like in G3.  Namely, ponies with raised symbols. It made me start to reexamine some of the G1s I'd previously dismissed.

Swirly Whirly was the first G1 with a raised symbol I added to my collection.  And suddenly I loved this set. They embody everything that I love about G1 - the pastel candy colours, the colour scheme, the accessories (and the scent is a nice plus).

After that I was away. Suddenly, there were a lot more ponies I was interested in adding to the herd. Sweetberry Ponies, Candy Cane Ponies, Magic Message, Happy Tails, Merry-Go-Round, Perfume Puffs...the list was (nearly) endless. Even the Princess Ponies got a second look (but I still hate their symbols and display them so I can't see them).

The latest change has been the addition of some Pony Friends.  I'd only had one as a child, Spunky, and even then I wasn't sure how I felt about her.  Two years ago I found one second hand and decided to keep her for a while. Then ZigZag joined her.  There will be others, but not every Friend.  I'm still curating and although I have a lot of full sets, I'm still not a completist.

This is something that I find fascinating about collecting and collectors.  We're always looking, thinking, reexamining, and making another decision about our collections (even if it sometimes feels more like instinct than active thought).

There are still individual ponies and sets that I have no interest in (Dance 'N Prance comes immediately to mind). Will that remain the case?  Who knows.  I may yet end up with a complete G1 collection someday.  But not right now.

Elf

A year later...

At approximately this time last year I was looking around my office deciding what to take home with me when I left that night. I knew I wasn't coming back to the office the following Monday, but I had no idea I'd still be working from home a year later. I had no idea that my visit to a restaurant that night would be the last such visit for (at least) a year. I had no idea that the casual get together between friends wasn't going to happen again for the foreseeable future.

 

I've been incredibly lucky in many ways. I have been able to work from home, and largely stay home otherwise. I live with someone I like to spend time with on a daily basis, four snuggly cats, in a house that I love. My family and most of my friends have been healthy. Because we didn't travel in the summer (and because the necessary background work was finished the year before), I was able to do more work in the garden than I'd been able to do in the six previous years we'd lived here. Because I didn't have to commute (or even go outside) on a daily basis in the winter, my chronic pain has been better managed than it has been in the last 27 years.

I've been amazed at how people have come together to help each other, through volunteering, through donations, through sharing a funny meme, and checking in on each other. I've been disgusted at the selfishness of people who refuse to make sacrifices for the benefits of others, who whined about having to self-isolate for two weeks if they take a southern vacation this year, who think they're above regulations or that they can't possibly be the person who becomes the super spreader when five different households get together.

I miss seeing my mom.  I miss seeing my family. I miss seeing my close friends and my long-distance friends. I miss some of my coworkers. I miss going on trips. I miss a lot.

I don't miss going to the office. I don't miss small talk. I don't miss my commute. I don't miss eating junk because I'm bored or lazy and it's cheap and accessible. I don't miss many of the social obligations that we've not been able to have this year. I don't miss a lot.

I didn't pick up any hobbies during the pandemic. I already baked, cooked, gardened, read, created art, and (of course) collected. Aside from working full time, I feel like I've been in training for when I retire. I've been damned lucky so far and I know it.

We're marking the one year anniversary of the "last normal day" by ordering take out from one of our favourite restaurants and sitting around in our pjs. I'm going to bake something for dessert. The moment someone offers me a vaccination I'll be right there, but in the meantime there are so many people who should be ahead of me in line. They should have the first chances to be vaccinated. In the meantime, I'll sit here with my collections, my books, my plants, my art, my baking, my cats, and my person and look forward to the things I'm looking forward to.

Elf

Geek Cave Week, 2021

 Seeing as how I had more unused vacation than usual this year (not usually a problem for me), I took a week off in February this year, rather than just a long weekend.  And naturally a good chunk of that was spent playing with ponies.

Last year Roomy and I had decided to split our collections between the Geek Cave and some glass-fronted bookshelves in the basement tv/art/office room.  Then pandemic hit and all plans to buy furniture were put on hold for quite some time. In the meantime we had the "extra" elements of our collections boxed up.  The "extras" included things like EQG minis, blind bag figures, and some merchandise. Eventually we were able to pick up a few shelves and start placing things on display again.

Not long after that Roomy and I both had the same realization at the same time. Roomy's office is in the basement where this new display space was going.  Over the first couple of weeks, she kept going over to the display cabinets during the day and admiring and playing with her collection.  She was spending more time with her collection there than she did in the Geek Cave.

So the ponies moved back upstairs and we've started the process of moving the MOTU and POP collections downstairs (slightly hampered by the need for more cabinets).  But it's a plan we're both happy with.

And so, with some modern things piling up in the Cave, I spent some time rearranging the vintage side of the room.  The G2s moved all in a row.  The G1s are the real winners here though, gaining quite a bit more display space.  I took advantage of the shelves vacated by She-Ra by spacing several of the ponies out more, so they're both easier to see and have more room to breathe.  It also means I've got more space to add more ponies, which is good because I foresee most of my pony money going towards G1s in the future.

I also moved the playsets that were displayed on top of the shelves down to the bottom shelves.  It's always a bit difficult to see what's displayed on the lower shelves unless they're larger pieces, plus they're a heck of a lot easier to access here, so that made sense. The 35th anniversary ponies are now living on top of the shelves and looking great.

The Shortcake space got a bit of a makeover too. The mane characters are now displayed entirely within the giant house (which I love displayed in it's new home on the opposite side of the room), while the Brazilian Shortcakes are looking a bit better higher up on the shelves and there's plenty of room to add some more later on.

The only part of the modern side of the room that had any attention was the addition of some wall shelves for the blind bag ponies. These shelves are attached to the wall with velcro strips, which are holding fantastically, but can come right off if (when) I next reorganize the room.

I'm really happy with what got done in the Cave this week, but it's certainly not the clean, organized room it was this time last year.  Frankly, it's a mess, but we're moving toward two display spaces that we're extremely happy with and we'll be having fun setting up our collections for quite a while to come.

I need another week off now.

Elf